Moreover, they are conservative in the true sense of the word, unlike the so-called conservatives in the USA and the UK. Just as parliamentary communists, as well as social democrats, worldwide, with the exception of Cuba and Venezuela, rejected Marxism and many of them even abandoned Keynesianism to boot, Japan's right-wing power elite cherished the conservation of the status quo, so such neoliberal policies as they have adopted have been far less radical than the kind that most leftists, when in power, put into practice, in the South as well as the North.*
[WS:] So what is it exactly that you argue, Yoshie? That there is no Left worthy its name in Japan? That the Japanese Left (in the name only) lost politically because it renounced its Marxist ideology? That the Japanese Left has been successful in the implementation of its economic policy, but the price of that success was the loss of distinguishable political identity? That cultural tradition influences political identity more than ideology? That Japanese Left should follow Iranian Islamism in its political rhetoric?
Wojtek